Preparing your environment for System Center Data Protection Manager

In this article

When deploying System Center - Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2016 or later, use the following information to plan your environment.

DPM deployment considerations

One of your first decisions is how to deploy DPM. You can deploy DPM:

As a physical standalone server—You can deploy DPM as a physical standalone server to back up on-premises data. Physical DPM servers can’t be deployed in a cluster, but you can manage multiple physical servers from a single console by installing Central Console on System Center Operations Manager.

As a Hyper-V virtual machine—You can run DPM as a virtual machine (hosted on an on-premises Hyper-V host server), to back up on-premises data. For a list of considerations in this environment see Install DPM as a virtual machine on an on-premises Hyper-V server.

As a Windows virtual machine in VMWare—You can deploy DPM to provide protection for Microsoft workloads running on Windows virtual machines in VMWare. In this scenario DPM can be deployed as a physical standalone server, as a Hyper-V virtual machine, or as a Windows virtual machine in VMWare.

As an Azure virtual machine—DPM can run as a virtual machine in Azure to back up cloud workloads running as Azure virtual machines. For information about this deployment see Install DPM as an Azure virtual machine.

In all deployments you’ll need:

A SQL Server instance, installed and running, to use for the DPM database. The instance can be collocated on the DPM server or remote.

Disk to be used as dedicated space for DPM data storage.

DPM protection agent installed on computers and servers you want to protect using DPM.

SQL Server database

DPM uses SQL Server as a database to store backup information for workloads, servers, and computers it protects. All SQL Server versions should be Standard or Enterprise 64-bit.

Note

For the supported versions of SQL, use the service packs that are currently in support by Microsoft.

For the below supported SQL versions, Standard, Enterprise and Datacenter (64-bit) editions are supported, based on the availability.

- For Remote SQL, database engine and reporting services must be on the same computer. .

- For remote clustered SQL instance, Database Engine must be on the cluster and SSRS must be on a separate computer, which can be the DPM server or any other computer)

Collations

SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS

Dynamic ports

Supported

AlwaysOn

Not supported

Installation

Install SQL Server on a remote server, or on the DPM server. It must be installed and running before you install DPM.

Remote installation

Install in the same domain and time zone as the DPM server. When used to support DPM, a SQL Server can't share a server with a domain controller. Read about Setting up a remote SQL Server instance. If you're deploying DPM as an Azure virtual machine, you can specify an Azure virtual machine running SQL Server as a remote SQL Server instance. You can't use an on-premises SQL Server. Using an Azure SQL Database isn't currently supported.

Setup automatically installs the prerequisites if they aren't already installed.

Limitations

You can install DPM on the operation system volume or on a different volume. DPM is designed to run on a dedicated, single-purpose server. Don't install DPM on: - a server running Application Server role - An Operations Manager Management server - A server running Exchange - A server running on a cluster node DPM isn't supported on the Turkish language version of any of the supported Windows Server versions.

DPM installation location: 3 GB Database files drive: 900 MB System drive: 1 GB The system drive disk space is required if SQL Server is installed on the DPM server. If SQL Server is remote, you'll need considerably less disk space for the system drive.

Each protected volume requires a minimum of 300 MB of free space for the change journal. Additionally, you'll need space for DPM to copy the file catalog to a temporary DPM installation location, when archiving. 2-3 GB of free space is recommended for the DPM installation volume.

Disk for storage pool

1.5 times the size of the protected data

2-3 times the size of the protected data

Logical unit number (LUN)

Applies only to DPM 2016/2019 servers upgraded from DPM 2012 R2, that use legacy storage pool.

Maximum of 17 TB for GUID partition table (GPT) dynamic disks 2 TB for master boot record (MBR) disks Requirements are based on the maximum size of the hard disk that appears in the operating system.

- DPM storage pools must be dynamic. - You can't install DPM on the disk used for the storage pool. - You can attach or associate custom volumes with protected data sources. Custom volumes can be on basic or dynamic disks but you can't manage the space on these volumes in the DPM Administrator console. - You can back up to tape with iSCSI attached tape libraries. We recommend a separate adapter for that connection. For additional information, see Compatible tape libraries.

Storage recommendations for DPM

When storage spaces is used to carve out DPM storage, storage spaces is supported on iSCSI and FC controllers as long as the virtual disks created on top of them are non-resilient (Simple with any number of columns)

Write- Back cache should always be se to zero while using Storage Spaces for DPM storage.

Protected workloads

Requirement

Details

Protected workload size limits

DPM 2016 and later with Modern Backup Storage do not have LDM limits.

With DPM 2016 and later, you can protect more data per DPM server. Up to 120 TB of storage limit per DPM server has been tested. However, 120 TB is only a soft limit. Validation is underway to test a higher limit. This guidance will be updated post completion of the validation.